To Hear The Truth
by Art-Over-Matter
Summary: Anthony has had a crush on Ian for a long time...but Ian doesn't return the feelings, right? This is To Tell The Truth from Anthony's POV. It also works to stand on its own. This is Ianthony; if you don't like the pairing, don't read it. Rated K plus for mild coarse language.
1. Hesitant

From the time I had very first gotten old enough to have a crush on someone, I had had a crush on Ian Hecox. It wasn't that hard to deal with when we were just friends, before we became _best _friends while we were in high school. But once Ian started to bum rides off me and we drew closer, my life became a little bit harder.

As far as I could tell, Ian had no romantic feelings toward me whatsoever—naturally, since he was straight—so I never mentioned to him that I was beginning to love him. I could just act like his friend, and for years, that was good enough.

Then something happened in 2008 and things started to change. Not much had shifted between me and Ian, but after the event I started to get this idea in my head that made things harder for the next few years.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself—back to 2008.

Ian came into my room one day while I was updating my MySpace page, which I hadn't done much with for several weeks.

"Hey, Anthony," he said casually.

"Hi Ian," I responded, still looking at my computer screen. "What's up?"

"Uh, nothing, really. What…what are you doing?" He started to sound a little nervous.

I clicked to the tab open in my Explorer window, the other thing I'd been working on before Ian came in. "Not much. Checking on Smosh stuff and whatever."

I'd heard him go to sit on the bed, but now he just sat there, not saying anything. I got the feeling he wanted to say something important.

"Did you need something, dude?" I asked, turning the office chair to look at him.

He blushed slightly, which made me feel bad. Ian rarely _ever _blushed, so he must have been really embarrassed about…something. "Uh, yeah, I was just gonna say I, uh…."

My heart beat a little faster, though I still hadn't gotten an idea of what he was getting at. What did he want to tell me?

It took Ian quite a while to respond. I tried not to feel awkward as I waited for him.

Finally, he swallowed and said, "Yeah, I have something I wanted to talk to you about. I think. Um." He paused. "You know? Never mind. I think I'll just go, uh—yeah. Never mind." He stood and tried to leave.

"Are you okay? I mean, you can talk to me, man."

"Yeah, but not about this," he said hurriedly as he bolted from the room.

I sat there, staring after him for a few moments. Whatever he'd wanted to say, it had been…too hard for him to get out, I guessed.

My eyebrows pulled together above my nose. Why wasn't he willing to talk to me? We were still best friends, right?

I decided not to think about it too hard. Ian would probably rather if I just didn't bring it up again.

But my mind couldn't get over this idea that maybe Ian had been there to tell me that he loved me.


	2. Considering

Four years later—it's 2012 now, and late June, to be exact. Vidcon.

Ian and I had planned to do an Ianthony tease during our stage performance for some time, and I hadn't really thought much of it until we were actually there. It was his idea, though, which I couldn't help but try to read into.

On stage, I was full of adrenaline and nervous as hell, of course, as was the nature of being at Vidcon. My heart was beating twice as fast as normal, though I managed to get through the first minute or so without dying of nervousness. Then it came time for that line….

Ian was looking at the stage floor. "Well, we could, uh…always do that…one thing we've always wanted to do…."

The crowd screamed, and I could hear a few girls shout, "Ianthony!" We looked at each other and I started to reach for him as he put a hand out toward me.

Suddenly, sixty thoughts could cross my mind at once, and I had a flood of indecision. What if…what if I actually kissed him? I wanted to, I realized. A lot. But in front of all these people?

No! What was I thinking? Ian would be disgusted. I would embarrass the hell out of him while on stage at Vidcon—it would be terrible, actually.

So of course, we pulled away and instead shouted, "A magic show!"

Everything went more or less as expected after that, and any thoughts of kissing Ian were swept from my mind in the rush of Vidcon energy. They didn't return until the conference was over that night and I was getting ready to go to bed. I was eternally grateful that I hadn't impulsively kissed my best friend, because that probably would have ruined our whole stage performance. But a little, tiny part of the back of my mind wished I had.

As it was—and I had to remind myself of this often—Ian still had no idea I was in love with him.


	3. Willing

A few more years went by.

Kalel and I had a strong relationship, or so we thought until things started to fall apart and we decided that breaking up would be best for both of us.

No, I wasn't happy to leave Kalel and eager to see if I could start a relationship with Ian. I was lost for some time without the girlfriend I'd had for nearly five years. And anyway, love was a background process in my life, one that only sometimes surfaced to take the spotlight when Smosh or other things weren't keeping me too busy.

It was odd that Ian and I parted ways with our girlfriends only a few months apart from each other when we'd been with them for years before that. It was coincidence, really, but it made things a little easier somehow.

But as I started to notice Ian more in the absence of Kalel, it also made something stand out to me among the routines of life; Ian was keeping something from me. It was eating at him, too, I could tell. So often, when we were alone, he would turn to me and open his mouth as if to say something, then frown and shake his head, waving away my quizzical expression. Whatever it was, he either really didn't want to tell me but had to, or really wanted to tell me but couldn't, or both. However that works.

I tried to ignore it for a while. I figured I'd let Ian sort himself out and either tell me or not. But this continued for months, and I knew without asking that it was something important. Eventually, it pained me to see this struggle go on in the back of my friend's thoughts—something just large enough to not be able to be easily pulled from his brain to become words on his lips.

One day, I pulled him aside when things were settling down after a Gametime with Smosh Games and brought it up. To my surprise, he seemed willing to talk about it. Hesitant, but willing.

"Yeah. Dude, I….There is something I should probably tell you."

"Okay," I answered. "Please, tell me. I won't mind."

"Um, you might…."

What could he have to tell me that I wouldn't like to hear? So this was bad news?

"I feel…a little differently about you than you think I do," Ian said, looking at the ground in a shy manner I hadn't seen from him in a long time.

My heart stopped. My thoughts were not words, but could instead be summed up by a simple interrobang. _?!_

He shifted his feet slightly. "You know…all that Ianthony crap we've had to deny for years…? Well, uh…." His gunmetal blue eyes lifted and met mine. I realized I was probably making a stupid face, so I blanked my expression. "Half of it is true. I do feel that way about you."

My mind kind of died for a few seconds, then switched back on. This was…this was the secret he'd kept from me? My life just became that simple? We both felt that way about each other? Wait…was he serious?

I raised my gaze from the floor and asked these very questions. "Are you serious? Is this…is this what you haven't been telling me all this time?"

"Yes…you don't seem that surprised."

"Well, I'd…I'd guessed it."

I didn't know why I wasn't more surprised. I'd had a feeling that Ian might have loved me differently than as a brother.

The more I thought about this, the better it got. Ian loved me. I wasn't feeling unrequited love for him while he stood obliviously to the side—he thought _his _feelings had been unrequited as well, or so I assume.

I looked up at him, a grin creeping onto my face.

"Ian, I love you." It felt wonderful to say it. "I mean, I feel that same way about you. I've spent so many years imagining that one day you would tell me this, and now you just did, and…yes! I love you too."

Ian looked at me blankly. It might have made me blush a little, but it didn't dampen my mood.

"Dude, don't look at me like that. I'm serious."

Ian chuckled, still looking disbelieving. "Um, okay. Wow. You, uh….Wait. You mean all this time, you've been feeling the same fucking way about me, and somehow neither of us told the other?"

He made it sound really stupid when he put it like that. I thought back to high school, when I first started to take an interest in Ian, then later, when we started making videos together, and more recently, when I'd thought I was getting married to someone whom I undoubtedly loved but was not…_the _one. All the time, I'd been in love with Ian Hecox. That was a little embarrassing.

"Yeah," I winced. "Uh, apparently. I mean, we had girlfriends and all, but…yeah."

Ian laughed, still unable to comprehend the ridiculousness of our double-sided unrequited love. Damn, did I love the way he laughed.

"I'm pretty sure we're idiots," he said. "But I guess that's okay."

I was still working things over in my head. "Do you think we should…could we…start a relationship, at this point?" How could we, after denying the truth of Ianthony for so long?

"I damn well hope so," Ian replied. "I mean, I know our presence on the Internet will make that hard, but I—I've wanted you for a long time, Anthony—" my heart skipped with pleasure at that "—and now we're both single and we know how we feel and….I don't know. We should probably wait and see what happens."

The ending of his speech was a little disappointing, but I couldn't help but agree. "You're right, but I think everything will work out one way or another. We'll make it work."

I put an arm around him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. It felt a little weird, but his grin told me that I could get used to it.

"Anthony?" he asked, wrapping his arm around my back and turning toward me.

"Yeah?"

"I think it's about time we try this again," he said, and he tilted his head up closer to me.

Before I knew it, we were kissing each other gently, hesitantly, on the lips.

I'll be honest: it was fucking wonderful.


End file.
